Ontario Press Council: It's OK to call your competitor a 'rag' p.

By: Editorial Staff

IT MAY NOT be very nice to call your competitor a "rag," but it is protected opinion, the Ontario Press Council declared.
The council on July 7 rejected a complaint from the publisher of a group of Ontario shoppers about an editorial in the weekly Huntsville (Ont.) Forester that described one of the free papers as a "rag which is nothing more than a wraparound for junk mail."
For good measure, the Forester editorial also described Muskoka Advance shopper as "a throwaway of the type that is causing some communities to pass junk mail bylaws."
Donald F. Smith, publisher of Muskoka Publications Group Inc., at first considered bringing a libel suit against the weekly Forester but agreed instead to let the council adjudicate the complaint.
The Ontario Press Council is a voluntary organization of nearly all the province's dailies and weeklies. A panel of publishers and private citizens rule on complaints of press abuse. Members agree to publish the council decisions.
The tiff between the paid-circulation Forester and the mostly free-distribution Advance began when a local government health office chose the Advance to carry its annual report as a paid advertisement.
In a Nov. 18, 1992, editorial, the Forester attacked the decision ? and the shopper.
Advance publisher Smith fired off a letter to the Forester publisher calling the editorial "malicious and defamatory." Smith said he objected to the suggestion that his 22,000-distribution paper is not widely read because it is free. And, he said, the Forester should have noted that it had a financial interest in winning the health office advertisement.
In his complaint to the press council, Smith maintained that Forester publisher Elizabeth Rice Aben reneged on an offer to print an apology, which Aben denied.
The press council sided with the Forester, noting that the weekly used unusually harsh language but stating, "It is appropriate for newspapers to exercise wide latitude in expressing their opinions in editorials, no matter how controversial or unpopular the opinions may be."